News and Events

Monthly Archives: November 2011

One in twelve teens self harm, study finds

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Professor George Patton from the Centre Adolescent Health, participated last night in the media launch by The Lancet in London of a new research paper that will be published this week on self-harming in adolescents.

See this link for the article in The Lancet: The natural history of self-harm from adolescence to young adulthood: a population based study .

This longitudinal paper, a collaboration with the Institute of Psychiatry in London, reports the natural history of self-harming within the Victorian Adolescent Cohort Study – it highlights the changing prevalence across the adolescent and young adult years. A very large number of media agencies were present at the launch in London.

Congratulations to Prof George Patton, Dr Craig Olsson, Dr Helena Romaniuk and Dr Carolyn Coffey who were co-authors.

This publication marks the 3rd paper this year in The Lancet by the Centre for Adolescent Heath/MCRI which is another fairly remarkable achievement by Prof Patton and the research team.

For further information go to MCRI’s web site on the launch.

Eating Disorders Program wins 2nd Award in two days!

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For the second time in two days Professor Susan Sawyer found herself accepting an award on behalf of the wonderful team who work on the Eating Disorders Program.

Professor Susan Sawyer Director, Centre for Adolescent
Health, and Dr Andrew Court, co-lead of the RCH Eating Disorder program, were delighted to attend the Premier’s Health Awards ceremony last week following the shortlisting of the RCH Eating Disorder program in the category of ‘Outstanding achievement by an individual or team in mental health”. In the photo is Dr Andrew Court, Christine Kilpatrick (CEO RCH), Prof Susan Sawyer, Health Minister Mary Wooldridge and Dr Peter McDougall (Chief of Medicine RCH).

Having just won the RCH Team Award for the same program the night before at the 141st RCH Annual General Meeting and Awards night, Professor Sawyer said that she’d managed to persuade herself that the team couldn’t possibly get up two night in a row.

“But as I listened to the Minister for Health, the Minister for Mental Health and the Premier of Victoria each speak in turn about what these awards were about – excellence, innovation, patient and family centred care, team work, integrated services – Andrew and I looked at each other and held our breath, knowing that the results we have achieved are as remarkable as they were challenging to acheive.” she said.

“And suddenly, it was our turn – and we won!  It was even more of a buzz than the night before”, she said, referring to same team being awarded the RCH Team Award at the 141st RCH Annual General Meeting and Awards Night.

The award was one of three awards that the RCH took home on the night.

Last night’s award makes it two in a row for the Centre for Adolescent Health. Last
year, the Chronic Illness Peer Support program was awarded a Premier’s Health
Award for excellence in ‘Tackling chronic disease and improving public health’.

CAH shines at 8th Australian and New Zealand Adolescent Health Conference

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The Centre for Adolescent Health was well represented at the 8th Australian and New Zealand Adololescent Health Conference 2011 held in Sydney from 9-11th November. There was a strong theme of indigenous health and of raising the profile of youth health within our region. Young people themselves were bothy vibrantly engaged and engaging through many different theatre and dance events within the conference together with a series
of formal presentations and feedback by young people themselves.

The Centre for Adolescent Health’s research, clinical and education programs were well represented, as were many staff and students, both current and past (see photos).

The conference program is available at www.youthhealth2011.com.au.

Presentations involving Centre for Adolescent Health staff and students (in italics):

  • Becoming an Adolescent Friendly Hospital (Susan Sawyer)
  • How complete is our picture of adolescent health? (George Patton)
  • Delivering primary health services in custodial to young people in custodial services (LynneFountain, Loretta Bellato, Dianne Garner)
  • Early interventions for young people with challenging behaviours (Monica Hadges)
  • Distance Education in Adolescent Health: Challenges and opportunities. (Andrea Krelle, Sam Van Staalduinen)
  • Workforce development in adolescent and young adult cancer care (Andrea Krelle, Sam Van Staalduinen, Kate Thompson, Lucy Holland, Lisa Orme, Susan Sawyer)
  • Consumer perspectives on adolescent friendly cancer care (Sarah Drew, Sharon DeGraves, Maria McCarthy, Tamara Bugge, Lisa Orme)
  • The Critical Friend: Things will change but not necessarily the way you expect them to! (Andrea Krelle, Helen Butler, Lea Trafford, Ian Seal)
  • Critical friends supporting change in schools (Andrea Krelle, Helen Butler)
  • Confidentiality with adolescents in the medicalsetting: What do parents think? (Rony Duncan, Maureen Jekel, Flora Pearce, Avihu Boneh, Anouk Derkes, Moya
    Vandeleur    , Michelle O’Connell, Susan Sawyer)
  • “It would have destroyed her life”. Interviews with psychologists about limits to confidentiality with adolescents (Rony Duncan, Annette Hall, Ann Knowles).
  • Program Evaluation: What’s so good about the Chronic Illness Peer Support Program? (Sarah Drew, Jessica Walton, Meagan Hunt, Loretta Bellato, Susan Sawyer)
  • Type 2 diabetes in Australian indigenous young people: A position statement on diagnosis, screening, management and prevention. Alex Brown, Paul Zimmet, R Fahy, Peter Azzopardi)
  • The health and wellbeing of Australian indigenous young people: A snapshot of current health status and programmatic approaches. (Peter Azzopardi, Robert Power, Elissa Kennedy, Rob Roseby, Susan Sawyer, George Patton, Alex Brown)
  • Adolescent fertility and family planning in East Asia and the Pacific: A review of DHS reports. (Elissa Kennedy, Natalie Gray, Peter Azzopardi, Mick Creati)
  • Jordan Hammond, youth mentor to the Youth Advisory Committee of the RCH and a past chairman of the Chronic Illness Peer Support Program, also attended as a youth representative.

Award Winning Eating Disorders Program

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Eating Disorders Program team

In recognition of outstanding results achieved by the Eating Disorders Program, the team received a highly prestigious Award at the Royal Children’s Hospital Annual Staff Awards Night held on Tuesday November 15, 2011.

In accepting the Team Award on behalf of the multidisciplinary team, Professor Sawyer, Director of the Centre for Adolescent Health, spoke of the huge toll that anorexia nervosa takes on adolescents and their families and of the team’s determination and commitment  to find new ways to address this challenging condition.

A particular challenge for the team was that the RCH experienced a 300 per cent increase in admissions of adolescents with anorexia nervosa from 2004-2008, which threatened to overwhelm the team’s capacity to respond to these complex patients. At the same time, growing research supported the role of Family-Based Treatment as first line therapy in adolescents with anorexia nervosa.

In 2009, this led the Centre for Adolescent Health to introduce Victoria’s first comprehensive, multidisciplinary Family-Based Treatment model of care for adolescents with eating disorders. The team is made up of paediatricians, mental health experts including family based therapists, nurses, dietitians, social workers, and includes those with music therapy and education expertise – as well as researchers. The team’s co-leaders are Dr Michele Yeo, adolescent physician at the Centre for Adolescent Health and Dr Andrew Court, psychiatrist, Integrated Mental Health Service.

Funded by the Baker Foundation, the team has ambitiously embarked upon standardisation of clinical care practices in order to drive consistency of care and improve clinical outcomes. These efforts have also underpinned the team’s development of an integrated clinical research agenda, including a large randomised controlled trial that is comparing two different forms of Family-Based Treatment.

To date, the team’s achievements include:

We offer clinical care consistent with world’s best practice and have greatly improved our clinical outcomes for adolescents with eating disorders.

  • We have significantly reduced the number of hospital admissions with anorexia nervosa. Prior to implementing Family-Based treatment, our admissions peaked at 130 per year.  By 2010, the team had reduced this to only 50 per year with a much more satisfied and less stressed staff.  
  • We have developed a new research agenda in adolescent eating disorders.

In accepting the award, Professor Sawyer spoke of the challenges of implementing Family-Based Treatment, as every member of the treating team’s role changed as a result of the new model of care.

“We could never have achieved such outstanding clinical outcomes without the commitment to improving the quality of our care that was demonstrated by every member of this team. I feel extraordinarily proud of what has been achieved”. 

The RCH Eating Disorders Program is now nationally recognised as a leading eating disorders service. This is because of the strength of the multidisciplinary team that is a vibrant collaboration between the Centre for Adolescent Health and the RCH Mental Health service, strongly supported by the adolescent inpatient unit and RCH Nutrition and Food Services.

Our Adolescent Medicine Manager, John Vernon said:

“The Awards event was uplifting for me and others because people were being recognized for human values as much as the actual professional work they did.

For our own award for the Eating Disorders Program, the team in this instance was a bunch of clinicians from 4 different departments, including the adolescent in-patient ward, focused on a particular need, making the work better and making the patients better”.

The Centre for Adolescent Health and the staff of our multidisciplinary Eating Disorders Program are very proud to have received such recognition from the Royal Children’s Hospital. The Program was also highlighted in the 2011 RCH Quality of Care Report.

Congratulations to the Team!

 

CAH Professors address 3rd World Health Summit

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World Health Summit
Professor Susan Sawyer, Director, Centre for Adolescent Health and Professor George Patton, Director of Research, Centre for Adolescent Health, were recent participants in the 3rd World Health Summit in Berlin in October in a major symposium on adolescent health. Interest in the adolescent and young adult years reflects dynamic changes in the burden of
disease in both younger children and older adults. At one end of the life-course, dramatic improvements in child health have led to growing interest in the  second decade of life – with an appreciation that new investments are needed in adolescence to cement earlier health gains. At the other end of the life-course, the growing burden of non-communicable diseases from behaviours that start in adolescence provides a very different rationale for promoting healthy adolescent development.

The World Health Summit has created an international high-level forum for thought leaders, innovators and change agents in public health policy and life sciences. Attended by governmental representatives, policy makers, non-governmental organisations, social institutions and health-related industries, it aims to initiate cross-sectoral solutions in
response to the complex challenges faced by our increasingly globalised societies.

The symposium on adolescent health was convened by the Centre for Adolescent Health through the University of Melbourne, together with UNICEF and The Lancet. The aim was to consider the scope for translating new understandings of adolescent health into global action. Chaired by Professor Susan Sawyer and Sabine Kleinert, Senior Executive Editor, The Lancet, the four speakers addressed important steps that included the establishment of adequate information systems, the development of structures for governance and
coordination of efforts, and examples of what programs are possible in this emerging field.

Defining the Problems: Development of Data Systems for
Adolescent Health George Patton | Professor of Adolescent Health Research |
University of Melbourne | Australia
Growing Global Systems to Respond to Adolescent Health Needs Miriam Temin | Consultant | Population Council and UNICEF |
United States
Growing Capacity in Adolescent Health in LMIC: The Experience in Sub-Saharan Africa Caroline Kabiru | Research Scientist | African Population and  Health, Research Centre | Kenya
The Potential for Joined-up Approaches in Adolescent Health Mickey Chopra | Chief of Health and Associate Director of
Programmes | UNICEF | United States